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Comment by TechBro8615 | Hacker News Reader

He is the commander in chief. He has the capability to threaten violence.

This tweet, while in bad taste IMO, was a threat to those who are planning to continue looting and burning buildings in Minneapolis.

I’m not sure if you’ve seen the videos, but there are full scale riots. Rioters completely looted a Target and burned it nearly to the ground.

Is “shooting” the answer to that? Probably not. And hopefully the National Guard is not going to do that.

But at the end of the day, this is the commander in chief making a public statement, and Twitter is editorializing it. Make of that what you will.

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> He is the commander in chief. He has the capability to threaten violence.

Actually no, he doesn't have the capability to threaten institutionalised violence against US CITIZENS which might have or maybe want commit a crime which is not capital and don't even lead to to much jail time.

If he would have the right to do so he would be an authoritarian leader and the US no longer a democracy.

Even if the national guard is dispatched they can just arrest people, not shoot them down (except if that people try to shoot down the national guard, which they don't).

My comment originally read "authority," but I changed it to "capability" for precisely the reason you cite. I agree.

As commander in chief he has many ways of communicating with the nation. Threatening violence on Americans on a private platform that explicitly forbids such actions is expressly not allowed and Twitter is well within their rights to “editorialize” it.

What is a realistic solution though? Police == violence, we might want to pretend that's not true, but it is. The threat of greater violence (a.k.a. police attacking you, throwing you into jail or even killing you) is what keeps lesser violence (individuals looting, murdering) at bay in civilized, democratic societies.

The solution is for MPD to do their fucking jobs and arrest the murderer.

This entire thing is happening because they refuse to simply arrest a man that has been caught on camera slowly murdering a man, simply because he is a cop.

Even if they arrested him and let him bond out (which is what would happen to any non-police individual in this scenario) there would have been zero destruction. Zero.

Yeah but think about the cops morale, they would be revoked the carte blanche aka the licence to kill (freely and pretend it was an accident)

For the most part, public shame is a bigger driver of everyday behavior than threat of violence. And threatening to shoot people (and conceivably ask questions later) is very different from announcing a policy whose violation will result in arrest and prosecution. It's called due process, and it's what separates a legitimate government from, e.g. rule by organized crime.

If the threat of violence wasn't there, there would be no police.

Justice and investigation, due process and responsibility to the public. Exactly what 99.9% of the protesters who are not looting are saying.

Proper riot control has non lethal methods of force

Correct. And a lot of this violence is a direct result of institutional systemic violence. Violence breeds violence in other words. This is terrible for the economy in general, but capitalists found a way to exploit violence and fear: the weapon industry thrives on violence and fear.

Correct, police = violence. Abolish the police.

Yeah, enforcing the law is the worst. If we just got rid of the police I for one would be much better off because all of your property would become mine.

I pity your lack of imagination.

elaborate

This is not a very inteligent conclusion. Police should simply de-escalate violence

Not sure if the story has fully made the rounds, but there was a whole panic during all this rioting about a kidnapping that took place. The police had just fled from the police station, and suddenly the same people who were burning down the station were desperately trying to contact the police to save a kidnapping victim.

We absolutely need to reform the police, but I really can't understand people who think we should abolish them. What is your plan to handle these situations?

Violence != Shooting people

> Police == violence, we might want to pretend that's not true, but it is.

I disagree, and point to a distinction that I learned from an essay of Christopher Hitchens. He described this as (paraphrasing) the distinction from the worldview of Hobbes versus the worldview of Locke.

Hobbes was of course the author of Leviathan, which viewed strong government as the barrier between an ordered society and a brutal state of nature ("the war of all against all"). Entrust a monarch with very strong authority, because the alternative is civil war at all levels of society.

Locke, writing somewhat later, advocated for separation of powers and constraints on the power of the state in general. In particular, the need for the entire state, including a possible monarch, to follow the law.

So, I would argue that the function of the police is to enforce laws, which are arrived at by a social negotiation, and that equating police with violence is mistaken. The threat of police violence is not what holds people in check. Rather, people are held in check by their recognition of the value of the system of justice and laws.

This viewpoint can explain why people have such a strong reaction to police who break that social contract.

Everyone is on board with each private platforms freedom to choose its content until it goes against their personal opinions: then, all of a sudden, the spaces of privately owned corporations are instead treated as if they belong to the public.

Net neutrality is important, because the digital infrastructure of the Internet is the "streets" of the digital world. Freedom of speech needs to be protected there, but when you're signing up for a free-of-charge social network that survives on advertising, you are literally soapboxing in a Walmart -- and it can't possibly be the civic duty of this metaphorical corporation to allow you to stay in there and disturb their business, rather than redirect you out into the street, or into your own place of business.

How about this for neutrality: When Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders end a post with "the shooting starts", they can get flagged for glorifying violence as well.

What does flagging posts on social media have to do with net neutrality? Nothing.

Net neutrality was never about the application layer, it was about the ISP layer.

I’m not sure where I insinuated anything about net neutrality being about the application layer? In fact I said the complete opposite.

This argument lacks so much nuance, yet I see it in every thread where a communication platform dictates who can and can't be heard.

The danger in the idea of "just find another X" is that, if you are willing to believe that the action in question justifies an open platform's prerogative to censor, then it follows that every alternative platform do the same. This creates black holes, if you will, that are incredibly easy for dissenters to fall down.

I'm not saying that I support Trump's message. But, as a society, we have to be nuanced about this and figure out what constitutes a right to use on massive platforms like Twitter. Twitter isn't just some dinky website. If you are worried about Russians/Chinese/Republicans swaying elections on social media, then you'd better be worried about how Twitter itself picks and chooses what you see.

After all, exactly how many levels down will we go?

Twitter: You can pay your own hosting fees.

Namecheap: Your users can find you at your IP address.

AWS: You can run your own server hardware.

Intel: You can build your own CPU.

Electric Co.: You can generate your own electricity.

VISA: You can take payments in cash.

Hospital: You can use your own butterfly strips and an ibuprofen.

United States: You can find your own country.

I see what you're getting at but it's not really a valid comparison.

Advocating violence (or whatever you want to call it) on Twitter directly affects their bottom line, and enjoyment of the site for other users.

More simply: A toxic environment repels advertisers, users and investors.

Using Namepcheap/AWS/Intel/Whatever for the same purpose does not affect those companies bottom line, or otherwise affect the user experience for other customers.

Let me ask you this:

With that logic, how exactly is the president(or anyone in authority whether it be a governor, police chief, etc.) supposed to threaten use of force on any communication platform? It seems like mass communication is needed, which inevitably involves advertisers and investors, thus an exception should be made for situations like this where the president's message goes against the interest of Twitter.

What you are saying about Twitter could be applied to TV networks, radio stations, and just about any other medium or platform that people use. They are all funded by advertisers, investors, etc. Should we really be entrusting billionaires in determining which messages from the government we should and shouldn't be hearing?

> Using Namepcheap/AWS/Intel/Whatever for the same purpose

My analogies might not be totally applicable(though all analogies fall apart to some extent), but that doesn't necessarily mean that they aren't applicable at all. A web host like AWS, for instance, could conceivably receive enough flack from investors and segments of the public for hosting undesirable content, in which case it might be their interest to let go a customer publishing that content using their services. Of course, that is far less likely than with something like Twitter.

More accurately, the alternatives would be something like CNN or iHeartRadio, or possible alternatives to Twitter.

Right. Which is why I think Twitter has chosen the best (of nothing but bad) options in handling this. That is, carry the message (since it is newsworthy) but annotate it.

>What you are saying about Twitter could be applied to TV networks, radio stations, and just about any other medium or platform that people use.

To a degree. But those businesses don't have positive social interaction as their core value proposition (reason to exist). People don't go to CNN.com for the purpose of being social. Thus anti-social behaviour on CNN doesn't affect their core value proposition in the same way.

>A web host like AWS, for instance, could conceivably receive enough flack

True, but groups organizing to lobby for a political/social purpose is a bit of a different beast altogether than one users actions directly affecting other users. In other words, there's no way (absent a bug/failure/poor design) that one users' usage of AWS should directly affect my usage of AWS.

All I'm saying is that social networks are very different from the other examples because they are, well, social.

> it follows that every alternative platform [will] do the same.

No, it does not. Particularly not in the case of Twitter. And the proof of this is self-evident in the alternatives to Twitter that exist today.

I'm sure you didn't mean it, but inserting "will" misrepresents what I was trying to communicate. A more accurate word would be "should" or "obligated to". Saying that they will follow in taking adverse action is more prescriptive than what I meant. My fault, not yours.

There are sort of alternatives to Twitter, though you have to admit that Twitter's approach and audience size is quite different from, say, someone's forum using vBulletin. Nevertheless, there are mainstream alternatives such as YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and perhaps TV and radio, but that's not to say that they aren't likely to make a similar choice to Twitter, if it is generally agreed upon that Trump's message is bad and either shouldn't be seen or shouldn't be engaged with. Since they have similar financial incentives, it's not totally unreasonable to think that these mainstream platforms would follow suit if Trump decided to abandon Twitter and start posting solely on one of these alternatives. Whether or not you agree with Alex Jones, he was banned from all these platforms in coordination. It's absolutely possible that the dominoes would fall, and non-mainstream alternatives like Minds or Gab or Mastodon aren't necessarily viable alternatives if their audience is incredibly small.

So they're going to not allow posts from gangsta rappers then, right? With avid public approval?

Are you honest to god defending the president saying that American citizens should be shot?

I'm not sure how that's the conclusion you drew from my comment.

> This tweet, while in bad taste IMO, was a threat to those who are planning to continue looting and burning buildings in Minneapolis.

Because I read what you said. You are saying it’s okay for the president to say that looters should be shot, it’s just “in bad taste”.

Are you honest to god deducing that the president said American citizens should be shot?

How else would you interpret “when the looting starts, the shooting starts”?

It's a (perhaps too) succinct plea to not loot, and a warning that people will defend themselves and their property accordingly.

You can not take someones life to defend your property in Minnesota. There are not "Stand Your Ground" laws afaik. A use of lethal force must be intended to protect someone's life.

Pedantry time.

“Stand your ground” isn’t about defending property with lethal force. Stand your ground is about whether or not you have a duty to attempt to flee (if possible) before applying lethal force. Castle doctrine is a similar rule, but more narrowly scoped to your own home. Without stand-your-ground, you have to demonstrate that you tried to, or were incapable of retreating before applying lethal force.

That being said, there are very few states of the union where applying lethal force to protect property is legal. Texas is the only one I know of. In Texas you could shoot someone to protect property even if you feel that your life and limb are not at risk, but that’s not the norm in other states.

All states allow some level of force to stop a fleeing felon, the well named “Fleeing Felon” rule, but Tennessee vs. Garner limited this to non-lethal force. So you could tackle a fleeing robber legally, but shooting one would be illegal outside of Texas.

Now Minnesota only has castle doctrine and stand your ground from your own vehicle. If one reasonably feels that life and limb are at risk in Minnesota you can apply lethal force, but if you’re outside of your home and car you have a duty to attempt to retreat first. In my opinion this makes shooting at looters to protect your business a dicey proposition legally, as arguably you should have just fled.

As always, I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice.

That's very interesting information, thank you for taking time to research this and explain it in a friendly and informative way. I am from Texas, so I admit most of my knowledge comes from my own state's laws. If I'm not mistaken we are in agreement that the looters lives should not be at risk in this situation and that Minnesota law will likely not protect an equivalent of what the Korean population did in LA during their riots, when they took to protecting their shops by getting on their roofs with rifles.

That’s an implausibly charitable interpretation, especially given that Trump has repeatedly expressed positive sentiments towards police violence, and advocated for the death penalty for citizens accused of crimes. He paid $85k to take out a full page ad calling for the Central Park five to be executed.

This is also the same guy who promised to pay the legal fees of anyone who attacked protesters at his rally, and suggested that we should shoot migrants crossing the border. It strains credulity to believe that this time Trump was just asking people to not loot.

American citizens should be shot in the same circumstances any other citizens should be shot, like when all other reasonable countermeasures fail and they are posing a credible treat to other people's lives.

Lethal force is occasionally necessary, and I agree it should be applied in as minimal as a way possible.

That’s pretty orthogonal to whether or not the political leader of the US should publicly say that looters should be shot.

There are better options than killing people. Even shooting legs is better than shooting to kill. I will never advocate violence on your own citizens because that creates a never ending cycle of violence and vendettas. It’s as stupid and fruitless as populist politics

> Even shooting legs is better than shooting to kill.

No it isn't. Legs are hard to hit compared to center-mass, and the only reason you should be shooting at somebody is if you need to because they are an imminent threat; therefore you should be aiming for a part of the body that you have a higher probability of hitting and that, having been hit, has a higher probability of effectively stopping the threat.

like when all other reasonable countermeasures fail and they are posing a credible treat to other people's lives.

...neither of which is an outcome in this situation, and looting is not a credible treat to people's lives.

But arson is.

There are two different questions here, which are only tangentially related.

First, are there circumstances in which a citizen could apply lethal force to protect life and limb? Obviously yes; shooting someone trying to light your house on fire is certainly something that is both plausible and plausibly legal.

Second, is it appropriate for the political leader of a nation to imply that people committing a crime will be shot for it on the street? Not "we will deploy the national guard to provide safety and security to the citizens" but "looters will be shot". I think the answer here is obviously no, that is not appropriate.

I'm not going to defend that part of the statement, it was obviously wrong to anyone with more than 2 brain cells if interpreted literally. However the situation has rapidly declined to a state where I personally think the use of non-lethal force is justified, and lethal in the case of an imminent threat (ie. armed and threatening or literally firebomb in hand). A number of dwellings and business have been set on fire, in addition to the police precinct. These are individuals (and some large corporations) that are unrelated, and those taking advantage of the chaos and creating more should be punished appropriately. Obviously appropriate measures do not involve shooting people.

That’s perfectly reasonable.

I will also add that this is also a case of tensions boiling over. While that doesn’t justify the arson, meaningful reform to defuse long standing tensions would be a wise move.

I'd also argue the recent pandemic and subsequent crash of the economy has an underplayed role in the riots. When many haven't left their homes (much) in months and have been laid off, it's no surprise they'd be looking for an excuse to get out and focus their energy. People are desperate and stressed and it makes for some abnormal dynamics.

To quote Mike Duncan about a historical incident that ended up toppling a government: “Everyone was just feeling a little bit mutinous”.

You’re right, everyone’s on edge, which has people acting funny.

Credible treats will be met with incredible tricks.

An alternative interpretation is that he was simply observing that violence begets violence, rather than encouraging it. My take is that he was deliberately ambiguous in order to taunt his opponents whilst also giving himself plausible deniability.

I think he probably meant exactly what everyone thinks, but you can shoot things other than bullets. Rubber bullets and gas canisters are also “shot.” He could have even been referring to the rioters shooting. I’m sure it would have been worded better if it wasn’t on Twitter, but that’s definitely on him.

The point is if you’re going to censor the president (or anyone, IMO) you should give them the full benefit of the doubt first.

No..he actually can't

The US is a federated country. The governors of the states have the ability to call in the National Guard to protect their state if they can not use Local/State law enforcement.

If and ONLY if that doesn't work can the State Legislature/Gov formally ask the President for help by calling on the Insurrection Act.

It's actually one of the core tenets of federalism.

Target is minor, they blew up a police station. That’s terrorism level attack. Police should have had control of the situation, they allowed it to happen

I kind of see it backwards from that. Police are an understandable target, given the situation. The police killed someone. But Target didn't do anything.

If I'm not mistaken, being commander in chief doesn't mean that you're above the law. No US law that I'm aware of allows you to threaten mass execution of US citizens.

> He is the commander in chief. He has the capability to threaten violence.

Not to Americans nor on American soil he doesn't. Because of the 4th amendment and the Posse Commitus act.

> the National Guard is not going to do that.

Who is controlled by the Minnesota governor. Trump has no legal authority to threaten protestors with the Minnesota national guard.

He may be commander in chief, but even commanders in chief have to follow certain laws / moral rules. Just observing his behavior during speeches and such, it should be obvious to anyone that Trumps mental state is... abnormal, and needs to be corrected.

Twitter isn't owned by the president or the federal government; Trump has many other legally established venues for his public announcements (whitehouse.gov, for instance). If he prefers to use a private company to speak to the public, he has to abide by its rules - in that regard, he is no different from any other Twitter customer.

Shooting people is not even remotely a correct response to looting. It's why someone might be court marshalled, or dishonorably discharged.

The funny thing is...I remember back when we held the US President to a higher standard than say, the worst soldier in the National Guard. Just because he is making a public statement does not remove the ability of the platform to fact check or accompany it with the idea that it's wrong. News broadcasters can freely air Trump speeches and pair them with fact checks. If trump would like to not be editorialized, he should post this statement on the White Houses's site. The fact of the matter is that he uses twitter for the audience, the claps, the viral followers. Twitter is not a public place, he is using their service for their service and to reach their users. They have every right to make statements on this and enforce their rules.

> he should post this statement on the White Houses's site

All "microblog" type posts made by a president should be posted directly through the White House's own web site, and not be communications through a commercial service.

Yes, shooting is the answer. Shooting rubber bullets, that is, and deploying tear gas and fire hoses.

I’m guessing you weren’t alive in the 1960s. Those are most certainly not the answer. Rubber bullets can blind or kill. Tear gas hurts like hell.

The correct action is reform.

> Rubber bullets can blind or kill. Tear gas hurts like hell.

So... don't go looting? It's supposed to be a deterrent. Maybe you'll think twice about burning down your local target and autozone if there is a risk of being blinded. You'll be perfectly fine as long as you don't reach for your molotov cocktail and baseball bat to go join in the "fun".

Because everyone knows there's no such thing as a stray bullet.

To be clear, you are saying "don't try to prevent looting/arson because there is a tiny risk of collateral damage to peaceful civilians"

Nope. I'm refuting your implication that the only people hurt or maimed by rubber bullets are the guilty:

>So... don't go looting? [...] You'll be perfectly fine as long as you don't reach for your molotov cocktail and baseball bat to go join in the "fun"

Why are there "peaceful protestors" in burning commercial zones, again? A smoldering Target seems like the wrong venue to protest at.

You know bullets can travel up to about two and half miles right? And that they can also ricochet?

This is not a video game we're talking about.

Rubber bullets? Or real bullets?

> Why are there "peaceful protestors" in burning commercial zones, again?

There'd be little point in provocateurs burning commercial zones if there weren't peaceful protestors there.

Bullets don’t have names on them and tear gas doesn’t discriminate between peaceful protestors and looters. The use of force should be a final response, not an initial one. It can and does hurt innocent people, inciting even more violence.

Peaceful protesters should not be anywhere near commercial zones being looted and burned. Why would a peaceful protestor choose to protest at Target and not the local Sheriff/Police headquarters?

Don't kill innocent black people then? The looting is a consequence. It's not as if looting happens everyday for no reason. People are angry and do certain things to express their anger. It's not fair for one side to protest peacefully when the other side resorts to violence for non-threats.

Don't kill innocent people of any color. Punish police who do. Everyone can agree on that.

"Looting is a consequence" is a poor excuse, looting/arson is not the correct way to express anger, you harm people who have nothing do with the problem or solution. Stop excusing their behavior.

Right that's exactly what police have been doing for a long time. Killing people unjustly. The people who started this need to stop first.

The person who smashed the windows of the Autozone, starting its destruction, was decidedly not a protestor. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-evjkVfJ7HY . There is some speculation regarding his identity, but even without a full investigation, his actions and attire out him as not part of the crowd.

Wow. That does not look good. Is this being reported on anywhere?

Hell, why not use real bullets then? After all it's supposed to be a deterrent. Don't go looting and you'll be fine.

Rubber bullets are a emergency tool if normal anti riot told don't work and the police is atacked work thinks like molotophcocktails. They easily cause major permanent damage like blindness and like work gun it's easy to get the wrong person by accident of groups are involved.

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